Media binders are used for holding a wide variety of items, including sheets of physical media, such as loose sheets of paper and the like. A media binder typically includes a cover and a binding mechanism for retaining physical media sheets that are inserted in the media binder. Many different binding mechanisms have been used to secure physical media sheets in such media binders. For example, some media binders include a metal channel that is crimped onto the physical media sheets in order to apply a mechanical holding force that retains the physical media sheets within the media binders. Some other media binders include an adhesive, such as a thermally activatable adhesive or a pressure sensitive adhesive, which bonds the physical media sheets within the binders. In some media binders, a front cover and a back cover are attached to opposite sides of one or more spring clamps that are located in the spine of the binder; the front and back covers can be folded back against the sides of the spring clamps, whereby the front and back covers act as levers and the spine acts as a fulcrum in opening the spring clamps to enable items to be inserted between the clamping surfaces of the spring clamps.
It oftentimes is difficult to achieve aesthetically pleasing binding results with the media binders that currently are available. For example, such media binders typically either require the user to position and register the physical media sheets without any guidance before securing the sheets to the media binder or they require a separate bulky alignment apparatus for positioning and registering the sheets within the media binder. As a result, such media binders typically either do not allow the user to achieve aesthetically pleasing binding results or they require the user to use a cumbersome alignment apparatus. Therefore, what are needed are media binders that provide aesthetically pleasing binding results with an intuitive and easy-to-use binding process.